IS THE MEDIA CUP HALF SEEN OR HALF HEARD
THE GRAND-DADDY OF MULTI MEDIA STUDIES
THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM US
THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD
IT’S EVERYWHERE; IT’S EVERYWHERE
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IS THE MEDIA CUP HALF SEEN OR HALF HEARD. That seems to be the question raised by the latest research from MRI (Media Research and Intelligence). As opposed to so many reports on people’s multi-tasking media habits, the MRI study says “much media consumption occurs individually.” The study emphasizes that half of at-home media usage is exclusive – meaning that the consumer is using only that medium. For example: newspaper reading (55%), Internet usage (53.8%), magazine reading (53.6%) and TV viewing (49.4%). Regular readers of MfM will remember an earlier BIGresearch report on simultaneous media usage which emphasized that “the only way for people to keep up with the deluge of media options is to multi-task with other media.” That report released earlier this year said simultaneous media consumption was up from its previous year’s report by anywhere from 1% to 35% depending on the medium. How do you reconcile the two reports? The answer is I can’t, or at least not fully. For example: The MRI study says 15.3% of at-home newspaper reading is done while watching TV. The BIGresearch study says the figure is double that with 30% of the consumers saying they watch TV while reading the newspaper. Another example: The MRI study says the number one non-media activity that consumers engage in while using media is chores. The BIGresearch report says the number one non-media activity engaged in while using media is eating.
That doesn’t mean the reports are completely contradictory. For example, both reports point to television as the dominant medium. The BIGresearch study says that when more than one medium is used in the home, it is typically television and another medium, a fact echoed by the MRI study; The MRI study also goes on to say that television is used by four out of five people (83.6%) followed by radio (63.2%) newspapers (55.6%), the Internet (52.6%) and magazines (37.6%). And both reports raise questions about television’s influence. The BIGresearch report says its study shows TV’s influence on consumers to purchase products has declined while new media options have increased. The MRI report says the percentage of people saying they were “very focused” when using television is significantly lower than for all other medium, except radio. Only a third (34.7%) of TV viewers report being “very focused” which is double radio (16.5%) but lower than magazines (41.8%), newspapers (50%) and especially the Internet (54.6%).
Both reports have some interesting, although somewhat expected, insights. For example: The MRI study shows a dramatic drop in exclusive media usage for Television and the Internet in out-of-home usage. The Internet drops from a half (53.8%) in usage in home to a fifth (20.4%) out of home (mainly because it is used in conjunction with work – remember the word exclusive.) Television drops to a third (32.6%) from a half (49.4%) while magazines drop only four points to 49% and newspaper exclusive use remains the same in home and out of home at 55%. Only radio increases slight (from 28.6% to 34.6%). The BIGresearch report shows channel surfing as the #1 activity during TV commercials (41.2%) followed by talking with others by phone or in the room (33.5%) and my favorite – mentally tuning out (30.2%).
THE GRAND-DADDY OF MULTI-MEDIA STUDIES. Regular and long-time readers of MfM will remember the Middletown Media Studies by Ball State University which in 2004 raised the consciousness of just how pervasive multi-media use is. That report said that if you summed up all media use in a day, it came to a staggering 15.4 hours a day, but that if you took into account multi-media use it dropped, but to a still huge average of 11.7 hours a day. The ‘most active’ person spent more than 17 hours a day – virtually every waking moment – with the media; the ‘least active’ person spent a still sizable 5.25 hours a day with the media. That study showed that people spend double the amount of time with media than they think they do. That may be because the Middletown study used observational data instead of either diary or telephone surveys.
THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM US. So said F. Scott Fitzgerald. To which Ernest Hemingway is purported to have said, “yes, they have more money.” Well, depending on how you look at it, they’re both right, according to a report by Ipsos/ Mendelsohn dubbed the Affluent Survey. According to the study, there are 23.3 Million households with an annual income of more than $100,000; 2.5 Million with an annual income of more than $250,000; and 2.67 Million households with liquid assets of more than $1 Million. Shock of shocks, the study reports that the affluent fly more frequently and stay at hotels more often, and when they vacation they are more likely to go to Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard or Maui. And when they play sports, they’re more likely to go sailing, play tennis, go snow skiing or play golf. (I suspect they don’t take part in a lot of pick-up basketball games, but that wasn’t included.) But, semi-serious shock of shocks, when they shop, they are more likely to go to Target (84.9%) or Wal-Mart (80.2%), than Saks Fifth Avenue (12.6%) or Nieman Marcus (13.5%).
When it comes to media, the use of television and radio by the affluent has declined steadily over the past five years while magazine readership has held steady. They watch the four networks in greater numbers (an average of 32 Million of them) than PBS (an average of 18 Million); more will watch CNN (26 Million) than Fox (17 Million). Their favorite non-news cable network (as I read the numbers) is Discovery (with 25.4 Million affluent viewers), followed by ESPN (22 Million), The Weather Channel and A&E (with roughly 21 Million each) and The Food Network (20 Million). The most popular magazine is…. drum roll please… People magazine (with 7.1 Million affluent heads of household), followed by National Geographic/ Traveler (6.8 Million), followed by (the one surprise) Pace Airline Media (5.6 Million) (and, no, I’ve never heard of it.). And, as has been reported elsewhere, the affluent spend more time online (an average of 23.4 hours a week) and make greater use of cell phones – 40% use hand-held devices to access the Internet and 10% make Internet purchases using their mobiles.
THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD: Or possibly I could have headlined this, the giant slayer. The little known India-based company Zoho has launched a suite of services to take on behemoths Google and Microsoft – everything from e-mail to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations to project management, database applications and customer relationship management. All online in a cloud computing environment that reviewers (such as websites WebGuild.org and ReadWriteWeb.com) have given good marks. Such good marks, in fact, that General Electric (a behemoth in its own right) has picked Zoho as its strategic partner for its 400,000 desktops. Zoho was the winner of webguild’s best web 2.0 apps content, and website readwriteweb (interestingly and coincidentally) used the same headline I did in referring to Zoho. And here’s the kicker: As if the fact that Zoho is competing successfully with Google et al is not enough, Zoho’s team of developers are straight out of school – NOT College… School. Zoho pays the young developers the equivalent of one year of college. At the end of that year, many stay on; some actually go on to college.
IT’S EVERYWHERE; IT’S EVERYWHERE. If radio series crime fighter Chickenman were around today, that’s what he would be saying about the blogosphere. According to the annual state of the blogosphere report by Technorati, blogs attract 77 Million unique visitors in the U.S. alone. That’s more than either MySpace (75 Million) or Facebook (41 Million), and that is out of a total of nearly 189 Million in the total Internet audience. Since 2002, Technorati has indexed 133 Million blogs. Of that number, 7.4 Million blogs were posted in the last 120 days, 1.5 Million blogs in the last week, and 900,000 blogs in the past 24 hours. The company tracks blogs in 81 languages across 66 countries and six continents. North America accounts for nearly half (48%) of all bloggers, followed by Europe (27%) and Asia (13%). South America only accounts for 7% while little Australia accounts for 3% and Africa has one percent. Despite the come-and-go nature of blogs, the average blogger has been at it an average of three years. Blogs are profitable, too, with most people investing $1,800 and the mean annual revenue hitting $6,000. (So, what’s wrong with my blog, I wonder.) Three out of four U.S. bloggers are college graduates with nearly half (42%) having attended graduate school. Two-thirds are male with half between the ages of 18 and 34. And although the highest concentration of bloggers is in the San Francisco Bay area, followed by New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, the folks at Technorati say the majority of bloggers do NOT live near the largest metropolitan areas.
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Showing posts with label radio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radio. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Message From Michael -- August 20, 2007
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION VS. DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY
SHOW ME THE MONEY
COCKTAIL CHATTER – A MUSICAL
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: That’s the title of a report from Harvard University looking at news on the Internet. The short-hand summary is that “the Internet is redistributing the news audience in ways that is threatening some traditional news organizations” – most particularly, local newspapers. But the traditional news organizations have “brand names” that they need to capitalize on, if they’re going to compete with the non-traditional news operations. The long-hand version of the report by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy is considerably more complicated. While “brand name” national newspaper websites (New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today) are growing, the websites of the dailies in large, medium and small cities are not. (In fact, local newspapers are probably losing audience to the national ‘brand name’ newspapers.) And while “brand name” networks (Fox, CBS, NBC) and local broadcast operations ARE growing, they have a long way to catch up to the “first mover” advantage that newspapers have. And none of the traditional news organizations are growing as fast as the nontraditional news operations such as news aggregators, bloggers and search engines and search providers – growth that study author Thomas E. Patterson calls “stunning.”
Let me throw out some figures: Brand name national newspaper sites average 8.8 Million visitors compared to brand name networks’ 3.2 Million, but the network sites are growing at 35% while the national newspaper sites are growing at 10%. Large city dailies average 1.2 Million visitors compared to large city television’s 250 Thousand, but large city TV is growing at 40% while large city dailies’ growth is flat. In medium sized cities, it’s a similar pattern but in small cities it’s a tighter race with small city newspapers averaging 94 Thousand visitors to their sites compared to 60 Thousand for small city TV; but small city TV is growing (modestly at 6%) while small city newspapers are flat. But here are the figures Patterson calls “stunning” – News aggregator Digg went from 2 Million visitors to 15 Million visitors in the last year, while Topix.net went from 50 Thousand to 750 Thousand. And that’s not even counting the “general aggregators” (Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN) which are hitting the 100 Million mark in terms of visitors.
The Players: By my count, there are a dozen key categories in the Internet News war: National Newspapers and National Television (which can attract local audiences); Local Newspapers and Local Television (and this is further divided into large, medium and small cities); Magazines; Commercial Radio (whose audience is very small but growing); Public Broadcasting/ Television and Public Broadcasting/ Radio (national and local); Bloggers – national and local (community sites and citizen media); Aggregators – the general ones which do have news as an important element, specific news aggregators and what Patterson calls “aggregators with attitude” – like the Drudge Report and Huffington Post; AND non-traditional actors. This one blew me away. Never thought of it. Lobbying Groups such as the Recording Industry of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, American Petroleum Institute. Patterson makes the point that many of these are growing by using news as a way to attract visitors to their websites. That is why Patterson says the “largest threat” posed by the Internet to traditional news organizations is “the ease with which imaginative or well positioned players from outside the news system can use news to attract an audience.”
Considerations: Newspapers originally had the advantage because the Internet was originally more ‘print’ focused. Video and graphics are now a bigger part of the equation. On the Internet, geography is less of a factor in deciding on a news source. That is why ‘brand name’ development is so important. The report emphasizes the importance of local news operations taking advantage of their local brand identity and their offline power to promote their online product. Patterson offers an object lesson from public television and radio which surprisingly was declining. His “hunch” is the public broadcasting websites promote featured programs instead of providing the day’s news. He basically argues that you have to have a balance in your local website of local, national and international news. Local news may be obvious, but if you don’t have national news as well, you’re conceding that area of interest to the national brand names. Patterson makes the point that while it is true that the Internet is contributing to an increasingly fragmented news audience, the fact is the Internet itself has a less disbursed audience than newspapers because while there are thousands of providers on the Internet, a small number of them dominate it – something that is not true in the newspaper system, or for that matter, in television.
Disclaimer or Consideration: The most important one is the point that you need two to three dozen online users, or readers in the case of newspapers, to make up for ONE offline user, in terms of advertising revenue. Secondly, while one sector of the Internet News category can increase in absolute terms (in actual numbers), it could shrink in relative size because, as Patterson puts it, “like the Cosmos, the Internet is expanding.”
Footnote: In case you’re wondering, the term “creative destruction” comes from the study of Economics and describes the transformation that comes about through radical innovation which, while destroying the value of established companies, introduces a new market dynamic that actually is good for long-term economic growth. I think it’s interesting that the authors used that term instead of the more commonly used “disruptive technology” which Wikipedia defines as “a technological innovation, product or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market.” Study author Patterson coins a phrase of his own when he talks about “product substitution” through the Internet.
Sidenote: A survey released by Frank N. Magid and Associates further validates the issue of brand importance. While noting that TV is still the most trusted source for breaking news, TV is vulnerable to loss of audience to the Web as a story plays out. Jack MacKenzie, who heads the group’s Millennial Strategy Program, warns that “to be a news brand today, you need to be a news brand of equal import on all platforms.”
SHOW ME THE MONEY: Despite all the gnashing of journalistic teeth about the “tarting up” of the news with infotainment, the Pew Research Center for the Press and the People says there is little real evidence that Americans taste for softer news has grown over the last two decades. The authors are quick to note that doesn’t mean news outlets have, as they put it, “erred financially” in running tabloid type news because even though interest is small, in the competitive news environment, small counts. The study looks at stories people say they followed “very closely.” The center has been doing this every year since 1986. The center says the level of interest in news has changed a little over the last two decades, but not much – with about a quarter (26%) saying they follow particular stories “very closely.” While the authors admit the term “very closely” may be a high standard, they say it still ‘suggests’ that the American news audience is only modestly interested in most day-to-day reporting.
What they are interested in, pretty consistently, is “disaster news,” says the report. It is the number one area of interest with four out of ten (39%) saying they follow such stories very closely. In second place was “money news” with 34% saying they follow such stories “very closely” but even more interesting, the authors say stories about people’s finances has grown steadily in interest over the last twenty years. When asked about specific stories that would fit into the tabloid category (such as the Anna Nicole Smith death), less than one in five (18%) said they were following such stories closely – only slightly more than those following foreign news (17%).
The report also does an interesting comparison of people’s news interest versus the media’s actual coverage. You might expect that the more coverage the more interest and vice versa. Not always. For example, the stories about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the trial of former Vice Presidential aide Scooter Libby received more coverage than the research by Pew would indicate people want. The coverage of the War in Iraq received considerable coverage and rightfully so, based on the public interest. But then there is the story about inadequate conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Center veterans’ hospital. It received what the group called “mid-level news coverage” even though it was of high interest to the public which ranked it fourth on its list of stories they followed “very closely.” Even more surprising, stories about weather did not receive as much coverage as the public interest would have indicated. For example, the “cold winter weather” in February of this year had the third highest ranking in viewer interest among all stories, but it didn’t get nearly equivalent coverage. Global warming is another example, with audience interest ranking it in the top ten, but coverage (at least during the time of the study) ranked it in the lower third. (I say “surprising” because we consultants almost always emphasize the importance of weather coverage.)
Sidenote: To put some of this in perspective, the study by the Magid group said Word of Mouth was the #1 way people who weren’t at home found out about the Virginia Tech story. it. And that was across all demos. And that study validates an earlier study by the Word of Mouth Association that word of mouth is the primary way many people find out about breaking news.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Only one today, but it’s an interesting one. Who would have thought in today’s day and age that a musical – a musical produced by the Disney Channel, no less – would be the hottest thing on television. Disney’s High School Musical 2 became the most watched basic cable television event of all time when it premiered Friday night. The sequel to the already highly successful High School Musical drew 17.2 Million viewers. Actually, it had much more than that in this correspondent’s humble opinion because I know many students – high school and even college – who arranged viewing parties for the event, which is a double phenomenon since the show is a Tween event. TV Week put it in perspective, noting that the viewership was comparable to CBS’s CSI or ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Critics are likening High School Musical to yesteryear’s Grease, or going further back, Westside Story.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
COCKTAIL CHATTER – A MUSICAL
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: That’s the title of a report from Harvard University looking at news on the Internet. The short-hand summary is that “the Internet is redistributing the news audience in ways that is threatening some traditional news organizations” – most particularly, local newspapers. But the traditional news organizations have “brand names” that they need to capitalize on, if they’re going to compete with the non-traditional news operations. The long-hand version of the report by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy is considerably more complicated. While “brand name” national newspaper websites (New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today) are growing, the websites of the dailies in large, medium and small cities are not. (In fact, local newspapers are probably losing audience to the national ‘brand name’ newspapers.) And while “brand name” networks (Fox, CBS, NBC) and local broadcast operations ARE growing, they have a long way to catch up to the “first mover” advantage that newspapers have. And none of the traditional news organizations are growing as fast as the nontraditional news operations such as news aggregators, bloggers and search engines and search providers – growth that study author Thomas E. Patterson calls “stunning.”
Let me throw out some figures: Brand name national newspaper sites average 8.8 Million visitors compared to brand name networks’ 3.2 Million, but the network sites are growing at 35% while the national newspaper sites are growing at 10%. Large city dailies average 1.2 Million visitors compared to large city television’s 250 Thousand, but large city TV is growing at 40% while large city dailies’ growth is flat. In medium sized cities, it’s a similar pattern but in small cities it’s a tighter race with small city newspapers averaging 94 Thousand visitors to their sites compared to 60 Thousand for small city TV; but small city TV is growing (modestly at 6%) while small city newspapers are flat. But here are the figures Patterson calls “stunning” – News aggregator Digg went from 2 Million visitors to 15 Million visitors in the last year, while Topix.net went from 50 Thousand to 750 Thousand. And that’s not even counting the “general aggregators” (Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN) which are hitting the 100 Million mark in terms of visitors.
The Players: By my count, there are a dozen key categories in the Internet News war: National Newspapers and National Television (which can attract local audiences); Local Newspapers and Local Television (and this is further divided into large, medium and small cities); Magazines; Commercial Radio (whose audience is very small but growing); Public Broadcasting/ Television and Public Broadcasting/ Radio (national and local); Bloggers – national and local (community sites and citizen media); Aggregators – the general ones which do have news as an important element, specific news aggregators and what Patterson calls “aggregators with attitude” – like the Drudge Report and Huffington Post; AND non-traditional actors. This one blew me away. Never thought of it. Lobbying Groups such as the Recording Industry of America, the US Chamber of Commerce, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, American Petroleum Institute. Patterson makes the point that many of these are growing by using news as a way to attract visitors to their websites. That is why Patterson says the “largest threat” posed by the Internet to traditional news organizations is “the ease with which imaginative or well positioned players from outside the news system can use news to attract an audience.”
Considerations: Newspapers originally had the advantage because the Internet was originally more ‘print’ focused. Video and graphics are now a bigger part of the equation. On the Internet, geography is less of a factor in deciding on a news source. That is why ‘brand name’ development is so important. The report emphasizes the importance of local news operations taking advantage of their local brand identity and their offline power to promote their online product. Patterson offers an object lesson from public television and radio which surprisingly was declining. His “hunch” is the public broadcasting websites promote featured programs instead of providing the day’s news. He basically argues that you have to have a balance in your local website of local, national and international news. Local news may be obvious, but if you don’t have national news as well, you’re conceding that area of interest to the national brand names. Patterson makes the point that while it is true that the Internet is contributing to an increasingly fragmented news audience, the fact is the Internet itself has a less disbursed audience than newspapers because while there are thousands of providers on the Internet, a small number of them dominate it – something that is not true in the newspaper system, or for that matter, in television.
Disclaimer or Consideration: The most important one is the point that you need two to three dozen online users, or readers in the case of newspapers, to make up for ONE offline user, in terms of advertising revenue. Secondly, while one sector of the Internet News category can increase in absolute terms (in actual numbers), it could shrink in relative size because, as Patterson puts it, “like the Cosmos, the Internet is expanding.”
Footnote: In case you’re wondering, the term “creative destruction” comes from the study of Economics and describes the transformation that comes about through radical innovation which, while destroying the value of established companies, introduces a new market dynamic that actually is good for long-term economic growth. I think it’s interesting that the authors used that term instead of the more commonly used “disruptive technology” which Wikipedia defines as “a technological innovation, product or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market.” Study author Patterson coins a phrase of his own when he talks about “product substitution” through the Internet.
Sidenote: A survey released by Frank N. Magid and Associates further validates the issue of brand importance. While noting that TV is still the most trusted source for breaking news, TV is vulnerable to loss of audience to the Web as a story plays out. Jack MacKenzie, who heads the group’s Millennial Strategy Program, warns that “to be a news brand today, you need to be a news brand of equal import on all platforms.”
SHOW ME THE MONEY: Despite all the gnashing of journalistic teeth about the “tarting up” of the news with infotainment, the Pew Research Center for the Press and the People says there is little real evidence that Americans taste for softer news has grown over the last two decades. The authors are quick to note that doesn’t mean news outlets have, as they put it, “erred financially” in running tabloid type news because even though interest is small, in the competitive news environment, small counts. The study looks at stories people say they followed “very closely.” The center has been doing this every year since 1986. The center says the level of interest in news has changed a little over the last two decades, but not much – with about a quarter (26%) saying they follow particular stories “very closely.” While the authors admit the term “very closely” may be a high standard, they say it still ‘suggests’ that the American news audience is only modestly interested in most day-to-day reporting.
What they are interested in, pretty consistently, is “disaster news,” says the report. It is the number one area of interest with four out of ten (39%) saying they follow such stories very closely. In second place was “money news” with 34% saying they follow such stories “very closely” but even more interesting, the authors say stories about people’s finances has grown steadily in interest over the last twenty years. When asked about specific stories that would fit into the tabloid category (such as the Anna Nicole Smith death), less than one in five (18%) said they were following such stories closely – only slightly more than those following foreign news (17%).
The report also does an interesting comparison of people’s news interest versus the media’s actual coverage. You might expect that the more coverage the more interest and vice versa. Not always. For example, the stories about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the trial of former Vice Presidential aide Scooter Libby received more coverage than the research by Pew would indicate people want. The coverage of the War in Iraq received considerable coverage and rightfully so, based on the public interest. But then there is the story about inadequate conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Center veterans’ hospital. It received what the group called “mid-level news coverage” even though it was of high interest to the public which ranked it fourth on its list of stories they followed “very closely.” Even more surprising, stories about weather did not receive as much coverage as the public interest would have indicated. For example, the “cold winter weather” in February of this year had the third highest ranking in viewer interest among all stories, but it didn’t get nearly equivalent coverage. Global warming is another example, with audience interest ranking it in the top ten, but coverage (at least during the time of the study) ranked it in the lower third. (I say “surprising” because we consultants almost always emphasize the importance of weather coverage.)
Sidenote: To put some of this in perspective, the study by the Magid group said Word of Mouth was the #1 way people who weren’t at home found out about the Virginia Tech story. it. And that was across all demos. And that study validates an earlier study by the Word of Mouth Association that word of mouth is the primary way many people find out about breaking news.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Only one today, but it’s an interesting one. Who would have thought in today’s day and age that a musical – a musical produced by the Disney Channel, no less – would be the hottest thing on television. Disney’s High School Musical 2 became the most watched basic cable television event of all time when it premiered Friday night. The sequel to the already highly successful High School Musical drew 17.2 Million viewers. Actually, it had much more than that in this correspondent’s humble opinion because I know many students – high school and even college – who arranged viewing parties for the event, which is a double phenomenon since the show is a Tween event. TV Week put it in perspective, noting that the viewership was comparable to CBS’s CSI or ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Critics are likening High School Musical to yesteryear’s Grease, or going further back, Westside Story.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Message From Michael -- July 16, 2007
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
DISCLAIMER: This week’s edition of MfM is a little longer than usual, because there were three significant studies that came out and that I am going to attempt to summarize briefly. Which leads to disclaimer number two, they are so brief that they are subject to some distortion of interpretation.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: And if you remember the line from the old Sam Cook song about teen love, you will remember that Sam also didn’t know much about biology, science, French and algebra. Well, now add to that – News. According to a survey by the Joan Shorenstein on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, teenagers and young adults are paying less attention to news than their counterparts of two or three decades ago. No news there, but the DEGREE OF DISCONNECT is news – not just newspapers, but national and local television, radio and the Internet. One out of four teens (28%) and one out of four young adults (24%) paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source. And another third of the teens (32%) and another quarter of the young adults (24%) paid little or no attention to three of the mediums and made only ‘moderate’ use of the fourth. Simply put, “daily news is not an integral part of the daily lives of most teens and young adults.” The survey showed that while teenagers and young adults may say they watch, read or listen to the news (because it is the ‘socially desirable response’), in actual fact they ‘skim’ the newspaper, watch TV for a ‘short while,’ listen to news on radio when it ‘happens to come on’ and read news on the Internet when they ‘come across’ it.
HARD NEWS VERSUS SOFT NEWS: The Shorenstein report also found that the difference in familiarity between hard news stories (such as the 400-point plunge in the Dow at the time) and soft news stories (such as Anna Nicole Smith’s death) was “nothing short of extraordinary.” Three out of four (75%) of the respondents OF ALL AGES knew about the typical soft news story while less than half (45%) knew about the typical hard news story. And two thirds (68%) correctly identified the factual elements of a soft news story while less than half again (45%) did so for the hard news story. A “puzzling finding”, according to the survey, was that while other research shows older adults are more likely to discuss public affairs, younger adults were three times more likely to say they had heard about a story from another person – although, in most cases it was a soft news story. The report did note that many hard news stories “have a numbing sameness – another act of Congress or another presidential speech – that can block them from memory even when they get heavy coverage.”
THE NEW MEDIA ROLE: Yes, the Internet is an important source for news for teenagers and young adults, according to the report. But it is a matter of degree. Two out of five teens (41%) and young adults (47%) say they became aware of a story through TV while only one in five (18%) say they became aware of a story through the Internet. Interestingly, one in four teenagers (28%) and one in ten young adults (12%) say they found out about a story through ‘another person.’ The report says Radio is actually the most “underrated news medium” because of its large “inadvertent news audience.”
THE NEW NEWS MATRIX. In the “old days,” there was a correlation between news interest and news consumption regardless of the medium, says the report. Mom and Dad read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and would watch the evening news. By default the kids acquired a news habit of their own, almost because they had no choice. The report says this “forced feeding” of the news habit came to an end in the 1980’s with the spread of cable television. Now the big question mark is whether the Internet will make news consumption greater because of its 24/7 availability or break down news consumption even more because of that same on-demand feature. The problem, say the researchers, is that online news exposure is less fixed by time, place and routine – elements that have a ritual ability to reinforce news habits. Now news consumption becomes more ‘inadvertent.’ And even though young people may say they are interested in news, their behavior says otherwise. It may be a matter of different medium for different needs. Newspapers for public affairs coverage; Television for entertainment programs; the Internet for gaming and social interaction. The report authors say media use today is largely a solitary affair that only reinforces existing preferences and doesn’t create news ones, like news use. They quote Aristotle who wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The fact that young people don’t repeatedly ‘do news’ is “a basis for pessimism about the future of daily news and young adults.”
You can access the full report at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/young_news_web.pdf
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Several recent reports cited a study by Edison Media Research that the Internet is close to beating television as “most essential” medium. In keeping with MfM’s focus on going behind the headlines, we can say -- WRONGO-GONGO. The Internet has beaten Television. At least, for people under the age of 44. Not only that, the Internet beats out television as the “most cool” and “exciting” medium for people under the age of 54 as well. Some consolation for my television brethren, on the flip side of the equation, more people (24%) deemed the Internet the “least essential” medium, compared to television (18%) and radio (18%). No consolation for my newspaper brethren, newspapers were deemed the “least essential” medium by more people (35%) than any other media. All this represents a fairly dramatic change from when the survey was taken five years ago in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the Internet beat out Television by a whopping 15 percentage points (46% to 31%) among the 12-17 crowd when it came to “most essential.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Internet also beat out Television by a substantial 12 percentage points (40% to 28%) among the 35-44 crowd in that arena. The race was much tighter among the 18-24 group (38% to 35%) and the 25-34 group (38% to 33%). It’s only when you get to the 45—plus crowd that Television beats out the Internet but by a mere 6 percentage points, but a substantial 16 percentage points in the 55-plus group and a whop-whopping 34% among the 65-plus.
And when it comes to being “most cool,” the figures for the Internet are even more staggering with the Internet beating Television by 20 percentage points in the 12-17 group; 19 percentage points in the 18-24’s; another 14 points in the 25-34; 17 points in the 35-44 group but a mere one point in the 45-54 group. Once you get to the 55-plus crowd (that Television doesn’t sell), Television beats out the Internet by 12 points and an incredible 35 points in the 65-plus crowd as “most cool.”
WHO’S STALE AND BORING: More consolation for my Television brethren, fewer people (24%) think Television is “stale and boring” in 2007 than thought so in 2002, when it was 36%. No consolation for my Newspaper brethren, more people (35%) now think they have become “stale and boring” than in 2002, when it was 30%. And for those radio readers of MfM, radio dropped 9 percentage points in terms of being “most essential,” increased 4 percentage points in being “least essential”; is flat over the five year period in terms of being “stale and boring”; but dropped dramatically in terms of being “used more.” The Internet (at 34%) beat radio (18%) and barely trailed Television (37%) when people were asked, “Are you using it more lately.”
THE KICKER: But here’s the kicker for you Television folks out there. When asked, “Who would you turn to first in the event of a major breaking news story,” Television dominates with 62% of the respondents picking TV, beating out the Internet (at 18%) by more than a three to one margin. The television figure is down from 2002 when it was 74% and the Internet is up from 2002 when it was a mere 8%. Radio is down, at 10% this year compared to 12% five years ago, and newspapers increased a tad, at 8% this year versus 6% five years ago.
(Okay, let me explain the headline. The Devil is in the Details can be translated a number of ways: you have to watch the details or they will trip you up; things are more difficult to accomplish because of the various details to be taken care of; or, the plan may appear simple but there is a lot of detail work to be done. The flip side of that is “God is in the Details” which some translate as meaning you can find big things in small packages, sort of along the line of ‘less is more’; or that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; details are important.)
You can access the full report at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/Q3%20Media%20Perceptions%20-%20large%20slides%20_2_.pdf
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM: A report by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab “Institute for Interactive Journalism” says four out of five “citizen media” websites consider what they do to be journalism and three out of four have pronounced their efforts a “success.” Of course, success has multiple definitions, including watch-dogging local government, providing news that couldn’t otherwise be had, helping their community to solve problems and nudging local media to improve. The Knight Citizen News Network (kcnn.org) has identified more than 450 “citizen media” sites in the United States. Both groups have adopted the term “citizen media” as their preferred definition of these sites, although both groups use the term interchangeably with “citizen journalism.” The J-Lab group identified several variations of the citizen media model – community cooperatives run by volunteers; trained citizen journalist sites using traditional journalism values and training to non-journalists; professional journalists who are operating for profit and not for profit sites; solo enterprise sites created by individuals, few of whom have journalism training; blog aggregators which act as one-stop community repositories; and legacy media sites launched by newspapers or broadcasters as places where the users dominate the content, as opposed to their own websites where journalists dominate the work. The report cites examples of each, and they run the gamut from people like Jonathon Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard (at newwest.net); former Boston Globe editor and now M-I-T Media Lab editor-in-residence Jack Driscoll (ryereflections.org); to “life and business partners” Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage who run a web design business in Brattleboro, Vermont (ibrattleboro.com)
J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer says her group believes citizen media sites “will become an enduring part of the emerging newscape” and urges legacy media groups to partner and support such sites instead of trying to compete with them. The report says ‘old media’ companies have launched such sites for a variety of reasons – to offset loss of editorial staff, to build community and thereby interest in local news coverage, and, candidly, to preserve or maybe expand market share among consumers and advertisers. Meanwhile, many ‘new media’ companies are struggling to harness citizen and advertising contributions to create profitable online revenue models. In short, both are looking for the right ‘business model.’ As a foot note, one of the larger, multiple citizen media sites, backfence.com, has gone out of business since the J-Lab report was issued.
You can access the full report at: http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/ and even have a hard copy sent to you.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM
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DISCLAIMER: This week’s edition of MfM is a little longer than usual, because there were three significant studies that came out and that I am going to attempt to summarize briefly. Which leads to disclaimer number two, they are so brief that they are subject to some distortion of interpretation.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: And if you remember the line from the old Sam Cook song about teen love, you will remember that Sam also didn’t know much about biology, science, French and algebra. Well, now add to that – News. According to a survey by the Joan Shorenstein on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, teenagers and young adults are paying less attention to news than their counterparts of two or three decades ago. No news there, but the DEGREE OF DISCONNECT is news – not just newspapers, but national and local television, radio and the Internet. One out of four teens (28%) and one out of four young adults (24%) paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source. And another third of the teens (32%) and another quarter of the young adults (24%) paid little or no attention to three of the mediums and made only ‘moderate’ use of the fourth. Simply put, “daily news is not an integral part of the daily lives of most teens and young adults.” The survey showed that while teenagers and young adults may say they watch, read or listen to the news (because it is the ‘socially desirable response’), in actual fact they ‘skim’ the newspaper, watch TV for a ‘short while,’ listen to news on radio when it ‘happens to come on’ and read news on the Internet when they ‘come across’ it.
HARD NEWS VERSUS SOFT NEWS: The Shorenstein report also found that the difference in familiarity between hard news stories (such as the 400-point plunge in the Dow at the time) and soft news stories (such as Anna Nicole Smith’s death) was “nothing short of extraordinary.” Three out of four (75%) of the respondents OF ALL AGES knew about the typical soft news story while less than half (45%) knew about the typical hard news story. And two thirds (68%) correctly identified the factual elements of a soft news story while less than half again (45%) did so for the hard news story. A “puzzling finding”, according to the survey, was that while other research shows older adults are more likely to discuss public affairs, younger adults were three times more likely to say they had heard about a story from another person – although, in most cases it was a soft news story. The report did note that many hard news stories “have a numbing sameness – another act of Congress or another presidential speech – that can block them from memory even when they get heavy coverage.”
THE NEW MEDIA ROLE: Yes, the Internet is an important source for news for teenagers and young adults, according to the report. But it is a matter of degree. Two out of five teens (41%) and young adults (47%) say they became aware of a story through TV while only one in five (18%) say they became aware of a story through the Internet. Interestingly, one in four teenagers (28%) and one in ten young adults (12%) say they found out about a story through ‘another person.’ The report says Radio is actually the most “underrated news medium” because of its large “inadvertent news audience.”
THE NEW NEWS MATRIX. In the “old days,” there was a correlation between news interest and news consumption regardless of the medium, says the report. Mom and Dad read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and would watch the evening news. By default the kids acquired a news habit of their own, almost because they had no choice. The report says this “forced feeding” of the news habit came to an end in the 1980’s with the spread of cable television. Now the big question mark is whether the Internet will make news consumption greater because of its 24/7 availability or break down news consumption even more because of that same on-demand feature. The problem, say the researchers, is that online news exposure is less fixed by time, place and routine – elements that have a ritual ability to reinforce news habits. Now news consumption becomes more ‘inadvertent.’ And even though young people may say they are interested in news, their behavior says otherwise. It may be a matter of different medium for different needs. Newspapers for public affairs coverage; Television for entertainment programs; the Internet for gaming and social interaction. The report authors say media use today is largely a solitary affair that only reinforces existing preferences and doesn’t create news ones, like news use. They quote Aristotle who wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The fact that young people don’t repeatedly ‘do news’ is “a basis for pessimism about the future of daily news and young adults.”
You can access the full report at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/young_news_web.pdf
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Several recent reports cited a study by Edison Media Research that the Internet is close to beating television as “most essential” medium. In keeping with MfM’s focus on going behind the headlines, we can say -- WRONGO-GONGO. The Internet has beaten Television. At least, for people under the age of 44. Not only that, the Internet beats out television as the “most cool” and “exciting” medium for people under the age of 54 as well. Some consolation for my television brethren, on the flip side of the equation, more people (24%) deemed the Internet the “least essential” medium, compared to television (18%) and radio (18%). No consolation for my newspaper brethren, newspapers were deemed the “least essential” medium by more people (35%) than any other media. All this represents a fairly dramatic change from when the survey was taken five years ago in 2002.
Not surprisingly, the Internet beat out Television by a whopping 15 percentage points (46% to 31%) among the 12-17 crowd when it came to “most essential.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Internet also beat out Television by a substantial 12 percentage points (40% to 28%) among the 35-44 crowd in that arena. The race was much tighter among the 18-24 group (38% to 35%) and the 25-34 group (38% to 33%). It’s only when you get to the 45—plus crowd that Television beats out the Internet but by a mere 6 percentage points, but a substantial 16 percentage points in the 55-plus group and a whop-whopping 34% among the 65-plus.
And when it comes to being “most cool,” the figures for the Internet are even more staggering with the Internet beating Television by 20 percentage points in the 12-17 group; 19 percentage points in the 18-24’s; another 14 points in the 25-34; 17 points in the 35-44 group but a mere one point in the 45-54 group. Once you get to the 55-plus crowd (that Television doesn’t sell), Television beats out the Internet by 12 points and an incredible 35 points in the 65-plus crowd as “most cool.”
WHO’S STALE AND BORING: More consolation for my Television brethren, fewer people (24%) think Television is “stale and boring” in 2007 than thought so in 2002, when it was 36%. No consolation for my Newspaper brethren, more people (35%) now think they have become “stale and boring” than in 2002, when it was 30%. And for those radio readers of MfM, radio dropped 9 percentage points in terms of being “most essential,” increased 4 percentage points in being “least essential”; is flat over the five year period in terms of being “stale and boring”; but dropped dramatically in terms of being “used more.” The Internet (at 34%) beat radio (18%) and barely trailed Television (37%) when people were asked, “Are you using it more lately.”
THE KICKER: But here’s the kicker for you Television folks out there. When asked, “Who would you turn to first in the event of a major breaking news story,” Television dominates with 62% of the respondents picking TV, beating out the Internet (at 18%) by more than a three to one margin. The television figure is down from 2002 when it was 74% and the Internet is up from 2002 when it was a mere 8%. Radio is down, at 10% this year compared to 12% five years ago, and newspapers increased a tad, at 8% this year versus 6% five years ago.
(Okay, let me explain the headline. The Devil is in the Details can be translated a number of ways: you have to watch the details or they will trip you up; things are more difficult to accomplish because of the various details to be taken care of; or, the plan may appear simple but there is a lot of detail work to be done. The flip side of that is “God is in the Details” which some translate as meaning you can find big things in small packages, sort of along the line of ‘less is more’; or that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; details are important.)
You can access the full report at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/Q3%20Media%20Perceptions%20-%20large%20slides%20_2_.pdf
TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM: A report by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab “Institute for Interactive Journalism” says four out of five “citizen media” websites consider what they do to be journalism and three out of four have pronounced their efforts a “success.” Of course, success has multiple definitions, including watch-dogging local government, providing news that couldn’t otherwise be had, helping their community to solve problems and nudging local media to improve. The Knight Citizen News Network (kcnn.org) has identified more than 450 “citizen media” sites in the United States. Both groups have adopted the term “citizen media” as their preferred definition of these sites, although both groups use the term interchangeably with “citizen journalism.” The J-Lab group identified several variations of the citizen media model – community cooperatives run by volunteers; trained citizen journalist sites using traditional journalism values and training to non-journalists; professional journalists who are operating for profit and not for profit sites; solo enterprise sites created by individuals, few of whom have journalism training; blog aggregators which act as one-stop community repositories; and legacy media sites launched by newspapers or broadcasters as places where the users dominate the content, as opposed to their own websites where journalists dominate the work. The report cites examples of each, and they run the gamut from people like Jonathon Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard (at newwest.net); former Boston Globe editor and now M-I-T Media Lab editor-in-residence Jack Driscoll (ryereflections.org); to “life and business partners” Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage who run a web design business in Brattleboro, Vermont (ibrattleboro.com)
J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer says her group believes citizen media sites “will become an enduring part of the emerging newscape” and urges legacy media groups to partner and support such sites instead of trying to compete with them. The report says ‘old media’ companies have launched such sites for a variety of reasons – to offset loss of editorial staff, to build community and thereby interest in local news coverage, and, candidly, to preserve or maybe expand market share among consumers and advertisers. Meanwhile, many ‘new media’ companies are struggling to harness citizen and advertising contributions to create profitable online revenue models. In short, both are looking for the right ‘business model.’ As a foot note, one of the larger, multiple citizen media sites, backfence.com, has gone out of business since the J-Lab report was issued.
You can access the full report at: http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/ and even have a hard copy sent to you.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
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